Color Management in Macromedia FreeHand 10: Capable but Quirky

If your workflow is to design in RGB and convert to CMYK at output time, FreeHand's color management can serve you well. Likewise, if you do all your work in final CMYK, FreeHand can provide you with good on-screen previews, and pass the CMYK values unchanged to output. This chapter tries to steer you clear of the shoals of confusion and guide you to the safe harbor of well-functioning color management.

This chapter is from the book

This chapter is from the book

Capable but Quirky

Macromedia must have a whole bunch of customers with an interesting variety
of legacy needs, because Macromedia FreeHand doesn't have just one color
management system. Exactly how many it has depends on your point of view, but
we'll concentrate on the ones that use ICC profiles, with a brief overview
of the othersif only so that you can wonder, as we do, why they're
even there.

FreeHand has many strengths, but we can't count color management as
being among them. The main limitation of FreeHand's color management is
that it only performs conversions on output, and it only supports one CMYK
source profile at a time.

FreeHand honors embedded profiles in imported RGB images, and lets you assign
profiles to imported untagged RGB images, but both imported and native CMYK
elements are always assumed to be output CMYK. If your workflow is to design in
RGB and convert to CMYK at output time, FreeHand's color management can
serve you well. Likewise, if you do all your work in final CMYK, FreeHand can
provide you with good on-screen previews, and pass the CMYK values unchanged to
output.

For any other workflow, all bets are off. And even in these two simple
workflows, FreeHand offers plenty of opportunities for mistakesso in this
chapter, we'll try to steer you clear of the shoals of confusion and guide
you to the safe harbor of well-functioning color management.

FreeHand's Color Preferences

The Preferences dialog has a series of categories on the left-hand side. When
you select Colors, a dialog box appears that looks like the one in Figure
13-1.

Color Management Types

On Windows systems, the dialog box offers four possibilities: None, Adjust
Display Colors, Color Tables, and Kodak Digital Science. Mac OS offers the same
four and adds is a fifth option, Apple ColorSync (see Figure
13-2) We strongly recommend that you ignore the first three options and
choose either Kodak Digital Science or Apple ColorSync, which offer identical
options and functionality in FreeHand But for those who must know, here are
the ramifications of the first three options.

None. This option offers no user control for either output conversions
or on-screen previews. The conversion from CMYK to RGB for either display or for
RGB output devices is controlled by a built-in and non-modifiable table, as is
the conversion from RGB to CMYK output triggered by the "Convert RGB Colors
to Process" option in FreeHand's print dialog (discussed later).
Needless to say, we don't recommend this type of color management.

Adjust Display Colors. We have two problems with this optionone
philosophical, one practical. It lets you change the behavior of your monitor,
for FreeHand only, in an attempt to match printed outputthe approach that
Bruce calls "messing up your monitor to match the print" (though he
usually uses a stronger term than "messing").

The philosophical objection is that it negates one of the major strengths of
color management. Back in Chapter 3 we pointed out that color management reduces
the number of device-to-device links from n-m to n+m. This approach goes back to
the n-m method, because you need to mess up your monitor in a different way each
time you change output processes.

The practical objection is that it simply doesn't work very well. Even
when we adjust the display to match printed versions of the swatches, we find
that the swatch colors are just about the only things that match between display
and printeverything else is off, sometimes a long way off. And to add
insult to injury, this method only compensates for native FreeHand
elementsimported images preview inaccurately.

Color Tables. This type of color management is pointless. It depends
on Kodak Digital Science or Apple ColorSync, and builds Color Tables based on
existing ICC profiles. Since you have to base the tables on ICC profiles anyway,
you might as well just learn to use ICC color management. We see no advantage to
this method, and would be glad to see it removed from FreeHand.

Kodak Digital Science and Apple ColorSync

Referring back to Figure
13-1, we need to cover two checkboxes before getting to the Setup dialog,
the meat and potatoes of this course.

Color manage spot colors lets you color manage just their on-screen
preview. You don't manage their CMYK values for output, because
they're hardwired based on FreeHand's built-in Pantone tables. (In
FreeHand 10, these are the older pre-May 2000 tables.) See "Named
Colors" in Chapter 18, Building Color-Managed Workflows.

Rebuild Color Tables uses the settings in Setup to build color tables for
use with the Color Tables type of color management previously mentioned, but
since we told you not to use this feature, let's move on to the contents of
the Setup button.

The Color Management Setup dialog box offers seven options (see Figure 13-3).
FreeHand isn't particularly assiduous in looking for profileson Mac
OS X, it only looks in the /Library/ColorSync/Profiles folder. On other platforms,
it ignores both subdirectories and aliases in the usual directories for profilesso
it doesn't, for example, find display profiles stored in the Displays subfolder
in the Mac OS 9 ColorSync Profiles folder.

Monitor. This is where you select your current display
profileFreeHand doesn't get this information automatically from ICM
or ColorSync.

Monitor simulates. The options offered are None, Composite printer,
and Separations printer. "None" literally means do no display
compensation. If you use this option, neither embedded profiles nor assumed
profiles get used for on-screen display, though they may be used for output.

If you use either of the other options, RGB images are displayed by
converting from their embedded profile or the "Default RGB image
source" profile to the Composite or Separations printer profile, (depending
on which one you choose in the Monitor simulates pop-up), then to the display
profile.

CMYK images, however, are always converted for display using the Separations
printer profile as source, even if Monitor simulates is set to "Composite
printer." If you set Monitor simulates to "None," FreeHand uses
its built-in unmodifiable table as the source for display conversion of CMYK
instead.

Separations printer. This setting lets you choose a CMYK profile,
which becomes the assumed source profile for all CMYK content, including
imported images, even if they have an embedded profileFreeHand simply
ignores embedded profiles in imported CMYK. As the CMYK source profile, it
affects on-screen preview of CMYK native elements and placed objects. If you
print from FreeHand to an RGB device, the profile you select here is used as the
source profile for all CMYK content. The only CMYK-to-CMYK conversion FreeHand
performs is to a composite CMYK printer when "Composite simulates
separations" is turned onagain, the Separations printer profile is
used as the source.

Intent. This pop-up lets you specify a rendering intent for all
conversions. It affects RGB-to-CMYK conversions at print time, and also affects
RGB-to-RGB and CMYK-to-RGB conversions when the Composite printer is an RGB
printer (and the output device is non-PostScript). This is the only
rendering intent control FreeHand offers.

Composite simulates separations. This checkbox only affects the
output, not the on-screen preview. It makes the composite device simulate the
separation printer by converting all non-CMYK content to Separations printer
CMYK, assigning the Separations printer CMYK profile to all CMYK content, then
converting the resulting Separations printer CMYK to the composite printer
space.

All the conversions use the rendering intent you specify under intent, so
it's impossible to use perceptual or relative colorimetric rendering to go
from the source profiles to Separation printer CMYK, then absolute colorimetric
rendering to go from Separation printer CMYK to the Composite printer space. If
you want the composite printer to produce a reasonable simulation of the final
separations, we recommend that you set the Intent to Relative Colorimetric.

Composite printer. Here you may select an RGB or CMYK profile for a
composite printer. If you select an RGB profile, the "Convert RGB to
process" check box in the FreeHand print dialog is ignored, though it
isn't grayed out. But selecting an RGB profile here is quite dicey when it
comes to printingsee "Printing," later in this chapter, for more
information.

To select a profile here, you must check the "Composite simulates
separations" checkbox previously described. There's no logical reason
for this; that's just the way it is. You can temporarily check the box to
change the profile, and then uncheck it to ensure separation simulation does not
occur. Even though the selected profile is grayed out when this box is
unchecked, it's still set as the Composite printer profile.

Default RGB image source. The profile selected here is
automatically assigned to untagged imported RGB images rather than simply
acting as the assumed profile. We make this distinction because images imported
while profile "A" is selected will retain profile "A" as
their source if you subsequently change the default RGB image source to profile
"B." Only subsequently placed images will use profile "B."
If you choose "None," the display profile, set in the Monitor pop-up
menu, is assigned as the source.

The profiles automatically assigned to imported RGB images are referenced in
the saved FreeHand document, but not embedded. If you open the file on another
workstation that doesn't have the profiles installed, you'll get a
cryptic warning dialog listing the missing profiles when you open the document
(see Figure 13-4).
The dialog says that the default RGB image source will be used insteadthat
means whichever default RGB image source profile is selected in Preferences
at the time the document is opened.

If you get this warning dialog, the prudent thing to do is make a note of
the missing profiles, click the Cancel button, then go find the missing profiles
and install them. Upon relaunching FreeHand and reopening the document, the
warning will no longer appear.

Note that this setting applies only to imported graphics. Native RGB elements
are always treated as untagged in FreeHand, assuming the display profile as
their source profile. This is annoying because the same native elements on two
different workstations have different RGB source profiles assumed, and will
print differently. To avoid major differences when printing native elements, you
need to calibrate all monitors to the same standard. Even then, there's
typically enough variation from display to display that you'll still get
minor differences.

Imported images will display and print the same from multiple workstations,
but native elements probably won't. It's a major gotcha and oversight
by Macromedia.